Re:Gender works to end gender inequity by exposing root causes and advancing research-informed action. Working with multiple sectors and disciplines, we are shaping a world that demands fairness across difference.

Women's Networks

Breaking through the glass ceiling is greatly facilitated when women help other women gain entrance and momentum through the career pipeline. Formal and informal networks are critical for paving the way. NCRW’s Corporate Circle fosters networking among corporate leaders to help them strategize, navigate career paths and develop leadership skills, as well as build new relationships and partnerships across companies and industries. NCRW’s Emerging Leaders Network is another initiative that is reinforcing relationships among young professionals. Our networks can be particularly useful across sectors bringing the latest data, trends and analysis to decision-makers and future leaders.

If you want to rise to the top as a woman in finance but you're not sure how, seeking out a role model can help illuminate the path. Here are seven women who have achieved great success in this field by being willing to stand out, taking risks and refusing to accept "no" for an answer.

Editorial:

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Finance is a male-dominated profession, especially at the top. While women in the United States make up 55.4% of the total labor force in finance, they comprise only 16.6% of executive officers, 18% of board directors and 2.9% of CEOs, according to a December 2011 survey by Catalyst Research.

If you want to rise to the top as a woman in finance but you're not sure how, seeking out a role model can help illuminate the path. Here are seven women who have achieved great success in this field by being willing to stand out, taking risks and refusing to accept "no" for an answer.

ICRW conducted an evaluation of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women initiative in India to identify early results of the program on women entrepreneurs’ business skills, practices and growth. 10,000 Women, launched in 2008, aims to provide 10,000 women who run small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with high-quality business and management skills training. Research shows that these women are often underserved, in terms of access to business or management training and entrepreneurial networks, despite the enormous potential they have to help grow economies in developing countries.

This brief presents a summary of ICRW’s initial evaluation of the India program, which shows how the 10,000 Women program — in combination with a number of other factors — is making a difference in graduates’ businesses and lives.

In 2008, Goldman Sachs launched 10,000 Women, a $100 million philanthropic initiative, which at the time, was the largest in Goldman’s history. The goal of the five year program is to provide business and management training to 10,000 underserved female entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Four years ago this month, Goldman Sachs invited me to attend the launch of 10,000 Women, a $100 million philanthropic initiative, which at the time, was the largest in Goldman’s history. The goal of the five year program is to provide business and management training to 10,000 underserved female entrepreneurs in developing countries. Why? Goldman’s own research (and that of many others) shows that female education is a driver of macroeconomic growth. Moreover, there was (and still very much is) a stark need to expand access to business education for women in emerging markets. When Goldman launched 10,000 Women, there were only 2,600 women attending MBA programs in all of Africa, a continent of 900 million people. Calestous Juma, a professor of international development at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, has estimated that if African women were given equal access as men to vocational training and technology, the continent’s economy would expand by at least 40 percent.

10,000 Women’s focus is very much on nurturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs), a sector of the economy with significant economic growth and employment potential. Aninteresting report from the International Finance Corporation notes that while there are roughly “8 to 10 million formal women-owned SMEs in emerging markets (representing 31 to 38 percent of all SMEs in emerging markets), the average growth rate of women’s enterprises is significantly lower than the average growth rate for SMEs run by men.” The report identifies several factors that have hindered the growth of women-owned businesses, including: institutional and regulatory issues, lack of access to finance, relatively low rates of business education, risk aversion, concentration of women’s businesses in slower growth sectors, and the burden of household management responsibilities. 10,000 Women addresses each of these issues, teaching its graduates how to recognize and navigate their legal environment, how better to access loans, prepare business plans geared for higher growth, and juggle a business with their family life. While the program does not provide credit directly, it has formed several public-private partnerships to do so. In Liberia, it is working with the Overseas Private Investment Corporation; in Tanzania with the Government of Denmark, CRDB Bank, and the U.S. State Department; in Peru with the Inter-American Development Bank and Mibanco.

We all know that women and girls are not showing up on a leadership trajectory, a position that would otherwise seem consistent with their increased rates of higher education, business ownership, workforce participation and other factors.

Back in 1993, I created a high-profile initiative called Take Our Daughters To Work that bears many similarities to the new campaign from the Girl Scouts and Nike’s campaign. Carol Gilligan’s seminal book, ‘In A Different Voice,’ provided the research orientation and Take Our Daughters To Work succeeded in mobilizing more than 70 million people on behalf of girls.

Yet, the research, the campaigns, and the web sites just keep on coming.

After years of progress, the number of female lawmakers in the U.S. slipped in the last election cycle. Leslie Bennetts on a new drive to change that—and why the country will be better off for it.

Editorial:

From the Daily Beast:

“Women are 51 percent of the population, but we have flatlined at 17 percent in Congress, with 17 women in the Senate, six women governors, and 23 percent of state legislators around the country,” says Tracey Hyams, director of Political Parity, a non-partisan coalition of leaders who have joined forces to increase the number of women in office.

In the last election cycle, frustration turned to alarm as women’s representation actually lost ground. “There was a net loss of 81 legislative seats for women,” reports Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. “It was the first time we’ve gone down in 30 years.”

At an NCRW expert panel on September 29, 2010 at American Express, authors Sally Helgesen and Julie Johnson provided compelling evidence for the view that companies with both women and men in strategic leadership positions have a competitive advantage over companies that do not. The particular strengths of women - their broad-spectrum vision, empathyand interpersonal skills, and their value-based, collaborative style - are increasingly recognized, but still under-valued in assessing leadership potential.

NCRW held an expert panel on February 28, 2011 at American Express with senior leaders from business, government, and academia to explore the case for, barriers to, and action steps needed to expand the number of women in leadership positions. While many overt barriers to women’s advancement have been largely dismantled, and the pipeline to leadership is filled with highly qualified women, the embedded prejudices in our institutions and culture as well as the expectations women have for their professional and personal lives, especially younger women, still pose challenges.

I have been video interviewing venture capitalists, angel investors and women founders trying to investigate the apparent shortfall in funding for women led technology startups. My goal has been to listen to as many people as I could from both sides of the table, in order to get a diversity of opinions on this controversial subject.

Whilst I have been doing these interviews, many people have said to me that no problem exists and that women can be as easily funded as men if they have a great idea, team, plan and advisors. However the statistics show another story. The percentages of women in technology, female entrepreneurs and female venture capitalists are extremely low compared to men. But the reasons are multifold and complex and cannot be resolved quickly or easily.

Theodore recently teamed up with Startup Genometo help get a critical mass of women to participate in the Startup Genome Compass in order to add the dimension of quantitative data to the discovery of the DNA of women led startups.

Researchers find that women bloggers tend to value reciprocity, or mutual exchange, and social ties much more than men, and they were more likely to share knowledge in an environment where those elements were present.

Bloggers and other social network users are more likely to share knowledge online where the qualities of trust, strong social ties and reciprocity are present, according to a study forthcoming in the Journal of Management Information Systems.

But the effect of each factor varies by gender, says Sanjukta Das, assistant professor of management science and systems in the University at Buffalo (UB) School of Management. Das conducted the study with co-authors H.R. Rao, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the UB School of Management, and Sangmi Chai, assistant professor at the College of Business in Sangmyung University in Seoul, Korea.